


keeping it light

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: F/M, Late Night Conversations, Takes place during the 8 months, just two idiots being a little silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-20 23:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15544839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: During one of their late nights in the office, Rebecca tells Nathaniel about her first makeover attempt.





	keeping it light

Nathaniel’s question catches Rebecca mid-stretch, arching back in her chair until it bends, her arms over her head with her palms interlaced and reaching towards the ceiling. She finishes it out, feeling her spine realign before lowering her hands to her lap as she regards him, one eyebrow raised in question.

“Hm? Sorry, what was that?”

He repeats himself.

“Did you do something to your hair?” he asks, gesturing towards his own head with a flick of the wrist.

Her initial assumption is that Nathaniel is setting up a segue towards the supply closet. That’s usually how it starts, a casual request,  even when, like now, it is late and no one else is with them in the office. Rebecca studies him and discerns that, no, there’s nothing particularly flirtatious about his expression, his tone merely curious, and his laptop screen is still up.

Her late-night calm dips very, very briefly under some unidentified weight, and she mentally files the moment away as something to be annoyed about later.

“No, not really. I mean, I recolored,” she says, instead, her hand coming up to fiddle at the ends. “Wait, is it noticeable? Is it all patchy? Have I been walking around all day looking like an ocelot?”

Nathaniel is already shaking his head, holding up his hands as if he can catch the sudden concerns as quickly as she conjures them. A slight smile plays around the corners of his mouth, easy to miss if she wasn’t looking. “No, nothing like that. You look good.”

Her mood hitches back up to calm again at the compliment, bouncing the weight right off, and that’s also annoying. She makes a second mental note for later.

“Well, you know how it is,” she says, settling back in her chair and crossing her legs. “The senior partner can’t exactly walk around with exposed roots for too long before it looks sloppy. I did consider a nice _ombré_ , but that isn’t exactly something I’m confident to DIY with a box in the sink.”

“Of course,” he agrees, a touch sardonically. “So the dark-haired vixen look is here to stay?”

“For now. I’ll go back eventually, but yeah, I’m liking the espresso. Gives a little extra oomph to my eyes and keeps everyone else on their toes for some reason. It’s great.”

“Mhm-hm.” Nathaniel hums, still smiling.

They settle back into companionable silence. The minutes tick by. Rebecca stares at her notes, drumming her fingers against the desk, less interested in proofreading now.

“This is a new record for me, actually,” she says casually, eyes still on her screen, definitely not tracking his movements around the neatly rounded corners of her laptop. “The last time I dyed my hair I only kept it for a couple days.”

His tapping against the keyboard stutters slightly.

“Last time?”

Rebecca looks up properly, smiling as she meets his bemused stare. “Yep. Tried going blonde.”

“…what?”

“Yup.”

She meets his disbelieving expression steadily, letting her smile sharpen to a smirk as his own expression morphs from vaguely suspicious to incredulous, his eyebrows shooting high up his forehead.

“Wait, seriously?”

She nods, feeling a small nip of satisfaction when Nathaniel puts down his laptop and pushes it away.

“What for? Did you just get a sudden surge to bleach it or something?”

“Please, it was so much more than a simple bleach job,” Rebecca scoffs, leaning back in her own chair, elbows draped casually over the armrests. “What do you take me for? I believe the actual shade was ‘sun-kissed’. I also had highlights. And extensions.”

Nathaniel blinks. “…huh. What was all of that for?”

 “A contest for the face of Miss Douche. And that’s not even all of it. It was part of this whole super relaxed SoCal sun-soaker persona I was trying out, which also included a spray tan and way too much fringe. And a unicorn sparkle tattoo,” she added as an afterthought.

The expression on Nathaniel’s face is somewhere between being threatened with a pen and that time he walked in on Karen recounting for the arcane benefits of her new batch of sex toys.

“…wow,” he manages at last. “That is…I can’t actually picture that.”

“Well, it’s all on Instagram, hashtag ‘who will be the next Miss Douche’—you can look up the pictures, if you want. I don’t mind.”

When he doesn’t immediately make a move for his phone, still staring at her, she shrugs.

“Okay then. Look it up or don’t, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m gonna get back to work. Gotta do a lot of very important work.”

She rolls her chair back towards her desk and starts tapping on her keyboard, writing without really seeing the words. In her peripheral vision, she sees Nathaniel hesitate before reaching for his phone.

She finds three lines to cut before she sees him start visibly in his seat.

“Oh my _god_.”

Rebecca looks up from her screen, frowning.

“Oh, come on, don’t sound so disgusted, it wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“I’m not _disgusted,_ ” protests Nathaniel, holding the phone at arm’s length, as if the image will make more sense further away from his face. “But this isn’t you. This is a completely different human being.”

“Yeah, I got a makeover, that was kind of the _point_. And it worked: I was a finalist.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Well, I mean, there were bots involved,” she admits. “And Heather ended up winning, despite not having actually entered, so it was kind of a wash.”

“Huh.” Nathaniel is still looking at his phone. “This is just…”

“Tacky?” she prompts, eyebrows raised.

“Well, a little, but that wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“What _did_ you want to say, then?”

He clears his throat.

“Nothing interesting. Why were you trying to be a representative for Miss Douche? You hate their products; you have a whole speech against douching. Which you have given in the office. Multiple times.”

“Yeah, it’s not great for your lady parts. And when I entered the contest...” Rebecca hesitates, briefly unsettled by phantom impressions of hurt and loss that originally led to that particular impulse but pushes forward anyways. “I…wasn’t in a great place. I had had two consecutive breakups and nearly burned down my house—"

“Wait, what?”

“Didn’t I tell you this before?” she asks. “Nope, wait, I told you I pooped in a shoe on Youtube when we first met, but I never gave any context. Right, that was related and we’ll circle back to that some other time if you ever want to hear it. Don’t look up the video on Youtube—I mean, I think Paula got it taken down, but you know how the internet is.”

“Noted.”

“All you need to know is that I was vulnerable and…impressionable to the appeal of being someone new.” She shakes her head. “I think I just needed to be the first choice for _anything_ , at that point.”

“Yeah?” His voice is soft. “For someone to choose you?”

“For someone to choose me,” she confirms, not looking away. The look on his face is not unfamiliar to her—it tends to surface when they talk like this, like they are the only two people in the world, and Nathaniel’s eyes go weird and sparks something prickly and warm under her ribcage that shoots right through to her toes and up through her vertebrae, making her light-headed.

It’s not arousal; arousal is easy to act upon and then it’s over and she can fix her skirt and swear it won’t happen again. This kind of warmth is something dangerous.

 _Boiling frog,_ she thinks to herself. _Turn the heat up slowly enough and it doesn’t feel it in time._

Nathaniel’s phone gives a small beep and he glances back down at the screen, breaking the moment and letting her breathe again. His expression hardens, eyebrows creasing sharply and his mouth tightening to a thin line.

“Something wrong?” she asks, because she just can’t help herself.

“Huh?” His head jerks back up and he blinks at her, discombobulated, before composing himself. “Oh, no. It’s just my dad—additional information for the client we’re meeting tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Rebecca grimaces – she has gotten a better idea of Plimpton Senior’s penchant for micromanaging over the last few months and it would not be hyperbole to say that during stressful periods she occasionally imagines dropping an anvil on his head should he show his face in the office. “You mean the meeting he insisted we overprepare for?”

“He likes to be thorough. I’ll send you the details.”

Minus a few choice comments, she’s willing to bet.

“Very thoughtful of him,” she mutters. “What’s he even doing up right now? Isn’t it past his bedtime?”

She’s pushing it a little–she’s never sure which way Nathaniel will react about jabs at Plimpton Senior. But it’s late, and Nathaniel at night is a different creature than Nathaniel in the daytime. His collar doesn’t seem to cut into his throat as sharply when he turns his head, and his hair is more inclined to flop over his forehead, usually from having run his hands through his hair enough that the product gives out.

Late-night Nathaniel wins out; the lines in Nathaniel’s forehead smooth out when he laughs, releasing Rebecca’s tension like a sigh. Even better, he sets his phone facedown on the stack of manila folders to his left.

“Not gonna respond?”

“I’ll confirm with him once we’re done here.”

Rebecca bites back a smile.

“Oh?” She leans forward, cupping her face on her palm, just restraining herself from batting her eyelashes at him. “Done doing…what, exactly? Making fun of my slightly questionable past life choices?”

“I wouldn’t call it making fun,” he says lightly, mirroring her gesture. “But, please, do tell me if there are others. What other colors have you dyed your hair? Did you have a goth phase?”

Rebecca clucks her tongue. “ _Hey_ , if we do that, it can’t just be me—you need to give something, too. I’ll bet even Perfect Plimpton wasn’t immune to fashion disasters.”

“Nice try. I went to private school: it’s pretty hard to mess up a polo shirt and slacks.”

“But what about college?” presses Rebecca. “Did you ever get involved with No-Shave November? Like, stubble works really well with your jawline, and you should seriously think about bringing it back, but I can’t imagine you with a full beard.”

Nathaniel pulls a face. “Never.”

“Good, because seriously, now that I think about it, you would be terrifying with a full beard. Did you ever shave your head, then? Have a rat’s tail? Any school spirit ensembles that went horribly, horribly wrong?”

“Now you’re just reaching.”

“You think so? I don’t, and if you’ve got something you might as well tell me now, because I will go digging, and you know I don’t care about getting my hands dirty.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

He’s laughing again and she grins reflexively, already feeling a little lighter, feeling the tension she had been trying to work out of her neck and shoulders earlier that evening seep away. Late nights at the office does this to her. It’s easier to be loose and silly. To be a little more open, a little more honest, when the horizon has been enveloped by the same darkness that presses right up against the windows and nothing else quite exists.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I get amused by the idea of Nathaniel getting caught up on events that occurred before he came to West Covina. Thanks for reading!


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